Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian proclaimed in remarks to Oman TV on Thursday his country would “never stop uranium enrichment,” claiming it necessary for “health, agriculture, and industry.”
He also reiterated Tehran’s claims that the true ruler of the country, “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against building nuclear weapons. While the Iranian regime regularly makes this assertion, it has never produced any documentation or other proof that such a fatwa exists.
Pezeshkian’s comments follow five rounds of talks between the Iranian regime and the administration of American President Donald Trump since April, intended to hatch out an agreement on Iran’s nuclear development. The government of Oman has mediated those talks and hosted four of the five; the fifth took place in Rome. The White House has repeatedly stated that the objective of the talks is to stop Iran’s uranium enrichment and its illicit nuclear weapons program, while Iranian officials state that the only goal of the negotiations is to convince Washington to lift its onerous sanctions on the country’s oil industry.
“We will never stop uranium enrichment to use for diagnostics and treatment, health, agriculture, and industry, because [enrichment] is our right based on international law,” the president said in the interview with Oman TV, which occurred in the context of his visit to the country. The Iranian state outlet PressTV, which translated the interview, added that Pezeshkian claimed that “no one can deny Iran its right to enrichment, because science belongs to all people who have the right to use technology and scientific capabilities.”
“We will never yield to pressure to stop enrichment. This resilience is an honor for the Islamic Republic, and we will insist on it,” he continued.
Pezeshkian insisted that his country’s uranium enrichment, which it is conducting at levels far higher than necessary for civilian use, was not a threat to the world as “the Islamic Republic is not after nuclear weapons.”
“Based on the fatwa of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Iran has never been and will never be seeking to produce or attain nuclear weapons,” he claimed.
Researchers have for years sought evidence that Khamenei signed such a fatwa and come up empty-handed. Iranian officials have not responded affirmatively to requests to produce the text of the fatwa.
The Trump administration has been clear that any agreement on nuclear development with Iran would require the country to stop enriching uranium on the scale it is currently doing.
“An enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line,” Trump’s Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff told Breitbart News in a recent interview. “No enrichment. That means dismantlement, it means no weaponization, and it means that Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan — those are their three enrichment facilities — have to be dismantled.”
Witkoff is leading the American negotiating team in the current talks.
Similarly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted that, for the Trump administration to agree to a deal, “they have to walk away from sponsoring terrorists, they have to walk away from helping the Houthis, they have to walk away from building long-range missiles that have no purpose to exist other than having nuclear weapons, and they have to walk away from enrichment.”
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Witkoff’s analog in the talks, presented an entirely different set of demands for Iran to agree to any deal with America in remarks on Thursday.
“Iran is sincere about a diplomatic solution that will serve the interests of all sides,” he claimed. “But getting there requires an agreement that will fully terminate all sanctions and uphold Iran’s nuclear rights—including enrichment.”
These comments align with Araghchi’s previous statement emphasizing the importance of nuclear enrichment for Iran.
“Figuring out the path to a deal is not rocket science: Zero nuclear weapons = we DO have a deal. Zero enrichment = we do NOT have a deal,” the foreign minister wrote on social media prior to the last round of talks.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei similarly insisted this week that Iran would “make no slightest compromise” on enrichment, effectively making any negotiation impossible.
Khamenei, the only person with true political authority in Iran, has repeatedly disparaged engaging in diplomacy with America. In February, prior to the announcement that the current negotiation process would begin, Khamenei dismissed any future talks with the United States as “unintelligent and dishonorable.”
“Some people pretend that if we sit at the negotiating table, some problem will be solved, but the fact that we must understand correctly is that negotiating with the US has no effect on solving the country’s problems,” he stated at the time.
More recently, this month, Khamenei lamented that he did not believe in his own country’s efforts to negotiate with America.
“I don’t think nuclear talks with the US will bring results. I don’t know,” the “supreme leader” shrugged.
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